Direct port from my Neocities blog

Created across several days with love, from 09/09/24 to 09/12/24 <3

...Oh. It's already time to talk about Floorp. Well, I guess it's time for The Switch from Spotify 2. This will just be a buckshot full of bullshit, isn't it?
Welp, might as well get our hands dirty with lead while we can. Let's talk about browsers. kameron the gun talk doesn't add any spice to the blog please stop

A Naive Start

Okay, sure, I was very corny right there to talk a little tough. We're talking about something as simple as browsers, what kind of r/brandnewsentence post is "Buckshot full of bullshit", right?
But that's the thing. The land of internet browsers is just a bit of a heavy war with a bunch of teens, hipsters and nerds in trenchcoats fighting over which browser is the best subjectively. There's a bunch of gossip here and there, especially on r/Browsers, there's "opera is spyware", "chrome is great", "firefox eats more ram", but there's always that one guy willing to either ride the toxic train to defend his favorite browser, bad or not. But that's not what this kind of blog is. Let's talk as though we're just a regular user, looking for a browser to use.
Because that's just who I was.

Surfin' like Joe: Early Choices

Before you can get to power, you have to be on the bottom rung. And that's where the backstory comes in. kameron it doesn't sound badass in your head you know that by trying to repeat this same joke you- shut up

As I was saying, we have to talk about the powerless days before we can get right to power user era. Let's talk about my history of browsers, and oh boy there's a lot of them! Firefox will be last since that's the main focus, and we have to get through the garbage first.

Internet Explorer

I'm covering this one fast because the humor value really seemed like it would align in my favor.

Internet Explorer... The infamous bloatware browser known for being bundled since 98, and overall being hated by many. I only ever used this browser as a joke, except for the one specific website that only worked properly when opened in IE for some reason. Internet Explorer is a huge joke, as implied on the box.
It's just slow, unnecessarily bundled with your computer, died pretty fast, and died when Firefox and Chrome came on the scene. For good reason too, this browser's UI is okay, but the rest is kind of crap. It's clearly aged since it was last supported, and other browsers have more than enough features. IE is pretty barebones in it's current state, and basically unsupported by 90% of modern webpages. Only good for downloading Chrome. 0/10.

Google Chrome

A powerhouse for some, sure. A RAM eater? A classic! A viable browser that is going to last long enough for my needs? What is this, Things To Do When Bored 2, no!
Oh, you're waiting for me to say I'm joking. Well, in that case, I'm sorry for your loss.

Oh boy, Google Chrome, the browser with a really high market share. This was basically the browser my sibling and I used repeatedly on and off for the first few years. Chrome might as well be called the "fox killer" the way it basically killed Firefox when it came onto the scene. While simple and pretty, sure, it's just not ideal for my uses. Let's talk a little bit more about the history I used it, since this is a key factor with a lot of these browsers.

Early Uses

Surprise, back in the day, I was like you! Didn't ask for ANYTHING in a browser. If it watched YouTube and opened ROBLOX, maybe The Useless Web, it was perfect enough. I wasn't aware of profile themes, wasn't aware of uBlock Origin, wasn't aware of anything else. If anything, I used Adblock Plus of all things... Gross.

I tried a few extensions, sure, but nothing special. I was stupid and naive enough to fall for ABP's bullshit, not even asking questions when it failed to block ads. And I just chugged on, going through my life as normal. Not one second thought about the browser I was using, it was just what I used.
Well it would hit me pretty hard when my eyes opened.

And yeah, maybe, perhaps, I tried a few russian forks... By coincidence. But in the end, it was just a personal trip for me.

End of the Road

Things changed drastically in the past few years. Google has become the controversy of many scandals. They're caught up in anti-privacy lawsuit bullshits, they pay many people including Mozilla (creator of Firefox, if you're not aware), Apple, and almost everybody else, just to be the top search engine. But everybody knows how widespread it is to say "Google has your data". But as far as I know, not many people bother to switch away, so everybody just willingly pays Google in Data, I guess. The ways you could just wish to say ABCDE Fuck You to some people. (I'm putting it the nice way, by the way)

Well, that was not the only way I willingly opened my eyes. I finally started to give a shit about the kind of ads I was being shown and such, and finally turned to uBlock Origin. Then more recently, Google released Manifest V3 and basically completely neutered adblockers as a side effect.
Oh, you thought that was bad? Read a bit more about the whole YouTube adblock scandal. All of a sudden, YouTube Premium is this big thing to Google and they started playing with the patience of it's users by blocking adblockers and bricking them all willy nilly. Forget cat and mouse, play Google's game of outcast and lawmaker. You can have your adblock stripped of effectiveness AND get to be hounded to turn off adblock for completely free! Your four stacked AdBlocks won't save you now, Timmy!

This post isn't just about spreading gospel about Google's shitty services that everybody's glued to though. Not only does the "getting bored" effect come into play just like the The Switch from Spotify, but also comes the new futures you got used to in the time you were away! No proper APIs for tab management or customizing the UI means that now you can't twice bake your little Tree Style Tabs or Sideberry extension to the side. The closest you get is this shitty watered down version that doesn't stay on screen when you click a tab, along with also being covered up by your browser's topbar tab design. All for free!
Get where this goes yet?

When you like a feature of another browser and it's not available, through extension or otherwise, then it's really hard to life hack it back into the browser because guess what, no alternative exists! And if no alternative exists, you can't enjoy your browser. Chrome is a GREAT way to explain the base state of "browsers" because people often just use Chrome raw with no real value or additions except maybe their four stacked adblockers that commit war crimes to humanity. Also, maybe stop using Adblock Plus.

Fuck chrome. Chromium is a step up but still bad. If you REALLY want this garbage for some reason, just use Thorium. This browser is just a case of ignorance.

To quote the thought process of the companies, as said by Kanye West:
"I don't take advice from people less successful than me."

Wow, we just started and we already dumped an essay into Google Chrome, a classic example of sheep society syndrome. Well, the next step is to actually get the rest of the browsers out of the way, so...

Maxthon

Okay, maybe I do not have as much information as I thought I did, so sorry in advance for that.

For some reason, I had an obsession with Maxthon 3.x, as shown to your right. I guess like some later choices here, I ran it alongside other browsers, which made a whole mess of my browsing choice, a classic move from back in the day. Coming from the same person who had a million folders on their desktop when they were like 10, what might be a better explanation for you: I WANTED TO BE UNIQUE!

Hey, would you look at that, it's Adshow Plus! Yeah, back in the day this browser had like, notetaking stuff, and for some reason the downloads panel was handled by an extension, but I don't remember there being an extension for games. That's quite interesting. Excuse the watermark.

This browser is old and I can't verify if it's good or not, so maybe test in a VM first. This kind of browser was interesting, but of course, it didn't last. Sure, it cemented my blind and uneducated opinion that AdBlock Plus was above all else, but we're all trying our best in the end. And I did eventually make the switch!
Right, we're offtopic again. Point is, Maxthon didn't last. I got focused on Opera, and of course, I wanted to hop ships as soon as I heard of another random browser. So that's what I did.

Opera

Okay, listen to me for just one minute. I did not add this browser JUST because of the spyware bullshit. That is not the main reason why this is here.

But I do have to throw it into the ring, so here's some things that they've seemingly done and here is r/browser's current recommendation thread, tell them what features you use and just get going.

Early Uses

Done glazing? Had enough of the ol' "They say they're from" and "But it works fine on" crap? Okay, you earned a couple of minutes of screentime, but nothing more.

I used to use Opera back when it still looked like this! It was before they were purchased in 2016 and it was a completely different beast then than it tends to be now. My reasons for using this browser when I was really young was mainly "haha I'm unique for using this", and sometimes I would run it alongside Opera for... well, shits and giggles. Which explains the warcrime. I also would try a bunch of random browsers that were forks of existing browsers, not knowing what forks were or what the difference was. I always appreciated Opera's design though, despite not knowing what had actually happened to the browser.

I did not completely understand the extensions the browser used, sure, but it seemed neat at the time, as did early Firefox of the time. And it remained like that for a while. Until...

Abandoning Opera

Fuck you, sudden switchup.

I eventually suddenly dropped Opera, around 2016. Why? I don't remember, I was ten years old! But it was a good run as I moved on to other places, specifically Firefox, I think. This browser is kind of just mediocre, not really my kind of recommendation. ESPECIALLY not in modern day, the UI is confusing and overall the browser is just sketchy. But with that in mind, note Opera for a little longer, because the next section is not too far behind!

Surfin' like Joe: Later Days

Opera GX

Well, if it isn't the queen of hot garbage in all of it's glory! I knew it would come up eventually Whew, we're going to have a very long talk with this one.

Opera GX, if you haven't heard of it, is an RGB shitfest. It has a bunch of wild features all willy nilly, makes use of a lot of "gamer" gimmicks, and a bunch of unneeded sidebars I don't want on my screen. Though I have to admit, the idea to make a sound when you press a key is pretty satisfying... Well, it doesn't justify the weird shit this company does, but I gotta say that the sound is nice at least... Until you look at the alternatives, but that's for another day!

Opera seems to like injecting a bunch of weird gimmicks like this for no reason. I don't think if they think it makes them any less sketchy, or they think that injecting a bunch of weird stuff into their browser makes it easier to appeal to gamers, or what... It's weird.

Not to mention the whole UI is like some kind of gay rainbow poop, but here we are! Right in the middle of I don't know, 2020, trying some browsers I haven't heard of in several years. I would go on and off with this browser for a few years, occasionally going back to this browser like crack.

End of the Line

It did NOT take long for this ship to crash down, and it took at fast as it did to build it up.

Not only had I discovered through my own use that the resource limiters were basically complete junk (only served to nerf the browser experience at that point, except maybe the RAM limiter which could be accomplished with tab suspending anyway), the VPN is actual dogshit. Not to mention, some really cool nerds basically implimented a recreation of the Opera GX UI for Firefox. Go figure, even that was taken from them by now.

Okay, so most, if not, all gimmicks from Opera GX were implimented in Firefox by now, considering it's not hard to go look for them. After all, Background noises & keyboard noises, the UI (as talked about earlier), grabbing images from clipboard, and some more, I think. So there's really no point in using Opera GX for me at this point. The UI is kind of okay, but it's not real rocket science either. Plus all the gimmicks are kind of just optional things I can live without.

Unless if you're careless or genuinely somehow believe limiting your CPU usage on a browser will help you, this browser is pretty barebones and mediocre. Not my first choice, and somewhere around my last right now.

Well, that was a bust too. Chrome has controversy behind it, Opera has controversy behind it, what's next-

Brave

Ah fuck, I knew that was coming.

This browser and I always had beef. I do not like this browser's inclusion of Cryptocurrency wallet bullshit and whatever other scandals it's trying to pull. It seems to have a huge obsession with crypto, something I don't really like. But hey, glory to crypto bros, I guess?

Well, if it isn't another browser with a bunch of bullshit behind it. Everybody's favorite kind of pointless browser! Let's also add rum, beer and a full internet posting of my address before the day is completely done.

Who am I kidding when all people want is serious reactions and a bunch of ass kissing for their favorite overcorporate companies? Fine, let's talk about Brave, the browser that seems to love it's slippery telemetry, injecting into site links, and a bunch of other things. As you can expect for any modern company, they have a new AI assistant and their own built in adblocker which may or may not be good. On top of these, they also focus a lot of crypto, which may be distasteful to casual users. Specifically, they have their own fork of Etherium or whatever the fuck it's called, and they sure LOVE pumping bullshit into their browser, akin to Opera GX's Gimmicks.

Try not to get too excited though, as much as that sounds like fun. Brave is really just another Chromium fork like everything else, so you're really just using Chrome under the hood again. Though, you're free to believe that you're using something fancy. It's really just Chrome with a facelift. I think even my entire body is in pain realizing how many Chromium browsers we have right now. Oh god.

Okay, fine! I hear you complaining across the screen that I fucked over the Opera GX part, and I need to do a better job with Brave. You want a fancy, long thought out post about why I don't like Brave? Here you go:
It's literally just Chrome. The browser is almost functionally and visually just Chrome with some extra features. The features are not overly gimmicky like Opera GX is, but it still slightly bothers me that the features are all things I can already add on my own with extensions. I mean come on, I already use and AdBlocker, I don't need another one right up my ass.

This browser is alright for main use, sure but the amount of gimmicks it tries to pull as well as the browser's borderline addiction with cryptocurrency as well as it's mostly cultish fanbase, I would not recommend this out of a hobby. I would recommend this only if the use case fits. Seriously, come on.

Woah, we're really getting through all the options, we might run out at this rate. As expected...

Vivaldi

Considering how Vivaldi was recommended to me by one of my parents, the fact it comes from the original CEO of Opera, as well as it's expansive options for customization, I really wanted to like browser. However there is a lot of really strange behaviors to this browser and obvious performance issues that seems to impact the optimality of this browser. that's the right word right?

This browser may be chromium browser, but it ticks all the right boxes with good customization, a pretty good track record, and even a nice cult following of users who know this browser in and out. However, this is not a glazing post, so let's talk about why I moved away from it!

The performance of Vivaldi is a huge detriment to this browser, and that's pretty obvious, at least in my own use cases. Startup is horridly slow, it's amazing this browser is still around. This browser is lucky it's maybe a second runner up, the top actual king of slow load times is Windows itself, for obvious reasons. I already have Discord taking a written essay and a half to start up, Windows already barely starts up after a few serious errors, I do not need my personal WEB BROWSER to also take forever.

Before we break down the main points, let's first talk about the update notifier. Holy fuck, I hate this thing. It takes up space on my taskbar, the overflow menu, whatever. I want this shit off my screen, but it doesn't go away! I have to deliberately KILL a seperate process to stop this damn popup from appearing. Now is it in settings? Probably. Do I have time to go check the fucking settings page to turn off an annoying popup? No! Time is much better spent just removing the exe from the folder instead. It's literally faster. That's just one caveat in too.

Okay, main points. The peformance of Vivaldi is so bad, holy shit. Startup times are genuinely so awful, it's amazing how this browser is still working. It's like somebody put duct tape over an original Opera build and called it updated. Sure, it's ready for modern standards, but the performance and the overall stability is so bad, it's like it's run by tape and miracles. Not to mention the stability issues this browser has. As said in the words of another redditor, the obscure issues this browser seems to have is amazing.

Here's a good joke for you, this browser's ability to make issues out of thin air! Love your web pages loading at all? Nah, go fuck yourself! Now your web pages refuse to load in the middle of May for no reason. Like using your browser as soon as it starts up? Bam, wait over 10 minutes to get even one page to load. Like holy fuck, let me breathe? Let me use the browser when it starts and not do ALL of your tasks at startup?

Oh, and this applies to general browser stability too. The browser, unprompted, crashed while trying to install a ROBLOX extension. This was when I was basically done downloading almost everything, and it genuinely impresses me how such a browser can be so awfully configured. Well, I guess I'm sorry for expecting a browser to optimally load a web page without me being able to make a god damn coffee while it loads. I expect that from GTA V, not a browser.

All of this arguing aside though, and my own seemingly unlucky use case (or maybe not, since some redditors seem to have my issue), Vivaldi is a really good Chromium based browsers. Use anything you want from the Chrome store, a mediocre (and again worse than uBO but better than nothing) adblocker, as well as some customization options. Plus there's a mobile app for both iOS and Android to sync your profiles, and even themes if you really so desired. Make everything piss green if you felt like it!

However, following the changes that will happen with Manifest V3, Vivaldi will likely not be ideal forever. And you really need the power of uBO. Hey, that's slightly related to this next choice!

Edge

I will say this exactly once, and it will not be repeated in basic for the people who are terminally obsessed with glazing Edge.
I do not like Microsoft Edge, at all.
Anybody who tries to object or otherwise convince me that Edge is any more efficient than my current browser choice (coming later on) will be shot once. People who object to these rules will be shot twice.
Survivors will be shot three times.

Okay, I think the glazers left. Let's talk about the weird trailblazer that has a couple thousand geeks obsessed for some reason. I didn't know a single fucking person who willingly used the UWP version of Edge, but I guess as soon as they released a native, cross platform version of it, people love it. And a random "setup" popup came up, so I think Microsoft is trying to shut me down, but who cares about that?!

Jokes aside, this browser is a pretty big handful. Let's talk about the browser that is literally made by the person who created your operating system. Let's talk about the software that literally fucking begs you to not change your default browser, and was made to nag you. Let's talk about how in Windows 11, they made changes so you have to sit through this browser's annoying ass dog whimpering as you change that selection to Firefox. Let's talk about all the other ridiculous choices Microsoft makes to their operating systems that people love to brush off, because company whiplash and company backlash doesn't mean shit!

Yes, in case you can't tell, I have a huge hate for Microsoft, and I don't seem to share that sentiment on my own. I have the right to as well, Windows is overbloated and infamously made fun of worldwide. Windows 10 laptops are bundled with HARD DRIVES for fucks sake too, something that will undoubtably put headaches and strands on the users who use them in the future. Not to mention, the crazy fucking stunts Microsoft loves pulling for some reason, like the whole fucking Copilot AI, Recall shit. Like that's asking for free spyware to watch over your shoulder while you enter your password. That sounds like a gold mine for hacks to leak your password from! Millions of gigabytes of my images released for the world to see?! Having microsoft see private search history? How do I sign up?!

This unholy dogshit is just a reincarnation of Internet Explorer, which by the way, STILL has it's ashes scattered everywhere. Microsoft seems to want to hide IE behind Edge. But they clearly didn't learn from IE, because they're trying to do the same shit as IE by making uninstalling this garbage brick windows updates. I feel so in control of my computer! I do not feel hard fucked by this at all, nooo!

Is it not enough they're pushing Telemetry down my throat every living minute I use my computer? Is it not enough they have ads on the file explorer, or that they try to install OneDrive with every moment, or that they auto bundle Office 365 with my computer which I have to manually uninstall all the time? What about how it automatically re-installs McAfee when I already know it's complete utter dogshit and that I'll be using Malwarebytes instead? I've moved on from the old, naive thought of "If it works, why switch?", I have more important things to care about now, like the shit going on my life, and the things companies are doing to fuck me over. I don't have time to do all of this extra annoying shit with every new computer. Why not just let me uninstall edge to make it easier instead of bricking any chance to update my god damn duct tape computer? The fuck were you thinking making this?

And get this, people seem to love over appraising this browser somehow. This clearly makes it more than Internet Explorer because people seem to absolutely love pretending this browser saved their life or whatever. Watch as about four cultists and a member of the Hope County Choir comes to my Guestbook to raid it over my "bad take". It's called a hot take by the way, you also misspelt "idiot".

This browser is, like Internet Explorer, only good for downloading Chrome while you get your shit sorted. Yet, unlike Internet Explorer, it has a cult following who for some reason ignores the crazy, unused trash that UWP Edge was. It's not really "impossible" to use this browser, persay, since it's still kind of functional...

No, you don't even deserve that, this browser was ALWAYS shit. The UWP version was pointless, looked ugly, and had no real traditional or explained extension support. It was just a gimmick for Microsoft to convince it's users that they can still make good web browsers, for some very bizzare reason. The new native version? It's as bad as the fucking File Explorer. Do you know how long it takes for a File Explorer window to become usable? Take a guess.
Over a minute.

Directory Opus takes maybe 5 seconds at most. That's why I'm constantly glued to DOpus now, because of Microsoft being strangely incapable of writing actually good software. And Microsoft loves to be the inclusion (note how i didn't say "the exception") because a good portiojn of things I can name that they made? Terrible. Windows after Windows 7 is terrible. The File Explorer is terrible. The settings app is terrible. Storage Sense is terrible, even. Edge is terrible, new Edge is terrible. their website is terrible. I shouldn't have to support a company who has locked several people out of their Outlook accounts for no reason after buying it, randomly removing Minecraft from their accounts and even just making it overly difficult to recover your account when it's PG targetted. I refuse to use Edge for these reasons, and many many more. Just use another browser. Microsoft is an infamously terrible company and the last thing I'm going to do is talk good about the dogshit they do. VSCode looks nice but doesn't excuse the stupid shit they love to do.

Seamonkey

This is a quick fire round because I don't have much on Seamonkey, I quit it pretty fast.

Basically, it was like very old Firefox that was bundled with a mailing client and a schedule thing I think. I stopped using it shortly after touching it because it was both pretty aged, and it's reaction to DRM was pretty finnicky. Wasn't ideal for my needs. May be a good experiment if you like Pale Moon though.

This also applies to similar Firefox forks like Basilisk and Pale Moon. They're great, but they're not really viable for daily driving.

Firefox: The Big One

Well well well, would you look at that. A browser run by a company with a list of controversies as long as the geneva convention. Though we really don't have any chouce by now, so people started forking the SHIT out of this browser and now we have more sections to chose from. So we can distance from the controversial actions of this parent comany. Let's get into it.

This will likely be the longest part of this blog because I was always pretty interested in Firefox. Get some popcorn and get comfortable. :P

Back Then

Ah boy, the firefox I'm used to. This is Firefox 50, from about 2016. This is the real version of Firefox I'm used to, this UI here. While there's older UIs that boomers will know way better, I'm more used to this in particular.

This was before the "Quantum" overhaul, so naturally things are different here. Maybe I was scared of growing as a person and stuck to the classics. Maybe I just used it because I knew my dad used it a lot. Or maybe, just maybe, I was destined to prefer Firefox in the end. But something about Firefox always attracted me. I loved finding random Firefox themes like this one and this one and this one and this one and this one and this one and this one and- Oh, I got offtopic again. Whoops.

Point is, I really loved Firefox. It looked really nice and it's themes really intruiged me when I was young. While this browser was unfortunately overshadowed by over browsers sometimes, Firefox still had that charm. Sure, I still believed that Adshower Plus was the only good solution to my needs, but it was still a great browser. A really great one. And I hold it pretty deep in my heart, even today.

Though, I still moved on, and wouldn't return to Firefox until way later. Because I was occiupied with Google Chrome and whatever else was before Waterfox.

Later on

So, the Quantum engine came out, which changed Firefox's UI and functionality to what it is today, to a degree. By this point, Chrome has just completely fucked up the market. I would end up returning to Firefox and having a pretty distasteful experience, and this goes in two parts, so listen closely and try not to misunderstand the story!

The Old Attempt

This is before I became aware of Firefox hardening. I can already see somebody cringing as I say those words, I think.

As expected, the browser was pretty bad. It was very slow and unpleasent. It seemed to be pretty busted and overall not fun to use. However, the thing was, I wasn't even using the browser properly, again, listen closely!

The browser was not hardened, which impacted my experience. Specifically, a lot of the more demanding, useless features were still on. But the thing is, I didn't use a user.js file either! So not only did I change nothing, I didn't apply any optimizations. If you can see where this is bad, good for you!
However since most of my audience is people who are out of the loop, I'll explain this to you quick.

User.js is a file in your Firefox profile folder that controls some browser settings. Why is this important? People have made custom user.js files which are known to be faster than Firefox's default settings. Why does this happen? We don't have a clue, ask the nerds. But the thing is, it's a little nerdy to install on just regular ol' firefox. So I think you can imagine how it was not knowing about this feature.

So I tried using the browser without literally any optimizations. As I got frustrated with Pocket's horrible news feed and a bunch of other things, I think you can imagine how fast I gave up. However, listen closely, there is another session we need to talk about.

Only Hardened

Ah, there it is. The better attempt.

This attempt was a little better. I hardened the browser with this guide (updated version) and for the most part, it was a little better! The browser started a little faster and was a little more effective than just running the whole thing raw, that was my last mistake.

However, listen again. Remember the user.js crap from before? I didn't run one on this session either! So again, the experience was pretty crap. Also, I think I broke it somehow later on, because according to my old notes, anything that uses Cloudflare was busted as shit. Also, roblox.com broke often, which, surprise, was an extension issue.

Speaking of extensions, let's clear the air fast. Firefox addons are not perfect. In a lot of cases they're better (specifically Firefox actually having Sidebery), however they can tend to be buggier, or even not be there at all! There are some browsers later on that can mitigate this, however those are way later. But first we need to get under the right header.

Now

There we go.

Yeah, Firefox is an... interesting case. I find that while ran completely vanilla, the experience was complete, and utter asshole. As expected. However, unlike Chromium, firefox is special. You see, it's forks are mostly preserved and some of them aren't even ass! You'll want to thank the community fast.

Hey speaking of, I happened to use a lot of forks lately. Let's go visit them.

Librewolf

Okay, right off the bat, there is only VERY few use cases i recommend this browser since the changes it makes are wildly different from any other browser, so listen carefully!

It's only recommended to use Librewolf if:

1. You have no problem with being logged out of sites after each browser shutdown

• Yes, every browser shutdown.

You don't mind having to manually unbrick sites that may be bricked by certain privacy extensions

(optionally) You absolutely care about your privacy

Yes, I'm serious. The paranoid type of behavior this browser is designed for is just plain insane. The amount of measures to protect you while you browse is just a bunch of layers upon layers. I get why this may appeal to some users, however, when I was looking for a daily driver, this kind of thing just wasn't for me. So I ended up continuing to look.

However, if you've been recently caring about your privacy or need a browser to clear your tracks when you close it, this browser is great for those kind of people, so feel free to download it and give it a try.

Waterfox

Waterfox was like a runnerup for me. Originally being built to provide x64 builds for better Firefox performance and later expanding it's horizons, Waterfox is like an extension of Firefox, run by different people. Now this might seem at first just like an obscure psuedo speedup of firefox or whatever you think it is, but Waterfox is pretty powerful.

Waterfox is very interesting because it's kind of like Floorp in a way. It has some interlopability with extensions, SPECIFICALLY tree style tabs, just like Floorp. However, Waterfox's implimentation just straight up connects the tabs to the Sidebar instead of using it like an extension. When you switch to the sidebar, the horizontial tabs are hidden, which is a small detail that's cool. I kind of miss it, but what can you say?

Again, I did not use Waterfox with a user.js I think, so these are personal observations. But seemingly Waterfox seems to have some niche bugs. ListenBrainz fails to load album art sometimes, and it also mangled ROBLOX site loading times. It did also once brick the avatar editor pretty badly, although again, that might be an extension issue, I don't know.

Also, for some reason, Cloudflare authentication broke when I installed a custom CSS theme, so if a site needed me to do a Cloudflare captcha, I just couldn't do it! What the fuck!

Generally though, this browser treated me pretty good despite these niche issues, and it was still surprisingly usable. It's a good alternative to Firefox if you just really hate Mozilla's guts like many people do.

Where am I now?

So, we're about to enter the modern phase. Although, I want to quickly cross into an honorable mention, Thorium, which is not firefox based.

Thorium, at it's core, is just Chromium on steroids. Many optimizations were applied over the browser and while it doesn't add anything special (except new toolbar buttons for experimental features), it's said to increase performance up to over 30% according to it's official page! That's impressive. While this browser does not fit my use cases since I'm looking for an alternative, permanent anti-V3 Manifest ecosystem, if you still need to be on the Chrome Web Store ecosystem for some dumb ass reason, or you just really got attached to Google Chrome, Thorium is genuinely really cool and you should try it out fo a day.

Ablaze Floorp

Okay, look. If you know how r/Browser tends to be, I might sound like a real glazer here. But just hear me out.

Floorp is a fork of Firefox made in Japan, and I genuinely love what they've done. Container tabs are integrated right in the thing, and Tree Style Tabs also has an option in settings. You can natively set tabs to sleep (it's called Sleeping Tabs) for any amount of time you want and set exceptions per URL. It also has the option to change your performance settings if you want to trade off some performance to save RAM and it also lets you pick a pre-made User JS to speed up your experience! God I love this fucking browser.

When I went to install the same theme I did during Waterfox (FirefoxGX by the way), it broke things at first, but after merging one of the presets and the Firefox GX one (by copying the firefox gx user.js to the bottom of the one i installed), it worked like a magician trick and it was sweet.

If you like Tree Style Tabs, you could also use Sidebery, which is similar, however it's support isn't baked into the browser. This won't stop you from hiding the Horizontial tabs and just using it anyway though, since it mostly works. Though you won't have Workspaces support like Floorp has, you can always just use the panels that Sidebery has.

I am actually in love with this browser. It's adapting for all of my recently picked up browsing habits, it's great. It fits my needs, it's faster than Firefox when run raw, and it supports all the same things. I have no reason to go back now and I can finally enjoy uBlock Origin without issue. At last.

Ending Notes

Well, that was a long week of writing. Thanks for dropping by! If you have any more questions or want to ask further about what I do, feel free to contact me and I'll see if I can help you.
Go have fun!